Researchers at North Carolina State University are re-engineering the traditional sweet potato to make it better suited for producing ethanol.
According to a NCSU release, this industrial sweet potato doesn’t look, or taste, much like the Southern classic, but can produce twice the starch content of corn – the leading source of ethanol. More starch means more sugars that can be fermented into biofuel.
Project leader Craig Yencho, associate professor of Horticultural Science, is also working with another colleague on a way to further boost sugar — and thus ethanol — yield. By using bacteria from deep-sea thermal vents they are creating an industrial sweet potato that practically processes itself into ethanol.
“Our ultimate goal is to develop a self-processing sweet potato,” says Dr. Yencho, noting that the special genes could reduce the cost of enzymes that are used by biofuel processors to break down the starch in corn to sugars which are then converted into alcohol by fermentation.
North Carolina produces about 40 percent of the U.S. sweet potato crop and the industrial sweet potato could help diversify the state’s farm income.
0 responses to “Sweet Potato Fuel”
GREAT ,I UNDERSTAND THAT SWEET POTATOES YIELD MORE ETHANOL PER HA THAN CORN, WE HOPE IT DEVELOPS FAST INTO A NEW FEEDSTOCK FOR ETHANOL DESTILLERIES NOW THAT WE KNOW WHAT A BIG MARKET THEY HAVE IF OUR COUNTRY MANDATES E25 AS REGULAR GAS
my question is it possible to make potatos into car fuel in the next two years.i would like to know if it will be on the stockmarket.
i like this idea. is it possable i could get more info?
Great idea! Wish your research will succeed.
But sweet potatoes are much more tasty than potatoes or yams.
In the present food shortage, there could be a fight for this
commodity for either ethanol or food. Are the vines convertible
to fuel? If it could be done than we have the best of both worlds.